Prada / Fall 2011 RTW

Search a show by:

If Miuccia Prada has her way, we’ll all be in coatdresses, low-belted and drop-waisted shifts, and calf-length boots, come fall. How to describe? With her, it’s very simple these days—on one level. For the past couple of seasons, like many designers, she’s rendered her collection down to a single message: In this case, a slightly sixties, vaguely Courrèges-like silhouette. The length hits where fashion hasn’t gone for a long time: four inches above the knee. The boots, patchworked from suede, snakeskin, and glitter, cling to the calf, ending in a snub-nosed toe and a blocky heel shaped into a surreally bulbous curve in the back. Each girl walked out with a little soft bag clutched almost anxiously under her right arm. Some were in furry bonnets, tied under the chin.

It was a decisive statement, but what was going on in the mind of this most famously complex of designers? “I was looking at the obsessions women have with things like python, fur, and paillettes, trying to see how sexy materials can look different,” she mused backstage as reporters clamored and jostled around her. “It was about a lady, getting more innocent.”

And sure enough, on detailed inspection, there was something less than straightforward going on here. The double-breasted coatdresses, and schoolgirlish checked shifts might have started off ingénue, but as things went on, the old, sly Prada weirdness crept in: a python coat with an oddly tinged beaver collar, fake fur strangely tufted on an organza coat, transparent paillettes dyed almost alarming shades of yellow to red. At that end of the scale, this collection has as much for grown-up addicts of Prada’s offbeat chic as it does for the underage. It might not be a full wardrobe, but those special pieces should keep the faithful happy enough.